Budget Mining

I'm in the process of assembling a dedicated GPU miner on an extremely tight budget. My current gaming machine, which I've used as my main mining rig [for research], is a 9-year old custom build that I've been upgrading slowly over time. As I'm waiting for the last of the purchased parts to arrive, I was looking to gain some general performance specs that this new rig 'could' have. I know I will not "get rich" with this by any means. This is still a research project in a sense - to see if it at least can be profitable [at all].

I've harvested used parts from friends who were looking get rid of old computer parts, to used parts I've laying around. So far I have put about $40 USD into this rig, completing it at the "basic miner" level - a PC with a dedicated graphics card. The secondary goal to this project is to see, if this rig is at all profitable to use, can I make an alt-coin miner on a tight budget, with the same performance as my gaming machine or better.

The current part list is as follows:

• An old full-size ATX case with plenty of airflow. (acquired from a friend)
• A 450Watt PSU with all molex connections. (acquired from a friend)
  ~ I may need an inline 4pin to sata power adapter harness. (estimated cost: $5)
• 1x 4GB DDR3 RAM module (waiting on delivery) - $32 from newegg
• Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H with CPU and sizable heatsink included (given to me by a friend)
  ~ CPU (I'll update that info when the RAM arrives, so I can turn it on)
• 80GB SATA HDD - Western Digital Recertifed - $9.95 from GoHarddrive.com (waiting on delivery)
  ~ I later discovered I had an old, untested 80GB WD with 4pin power connection, 80GB Seagate and 750GB WD - all SATA. So if the RAM arrives first I may be using one of those.
• PNY nVidia Quadro 2000D [VCQ2000D-PB] (given to me by a friend)
  ~ I am looking to upgrade this rig with two (2) ZOTAC Geforce GT 710's [ZT-17304-20L] PCIe x1, x8, or an equivalent.

My current rig/gaming machine: (some parts determined in Speccy)

• Full size ATX case
• 650Watt PSU
• ASUSTeK M4A78T-E (AM3)
• AMD Phenom II X3 720 Heka
• 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 535MHz (7-7-7-20)
• 2.14GB of combined HDD storage (irrelevant for this use case)
• One (1) 1023MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 (MSI)

I've been looking on several sites for the best coins to mine under the specified hardware. However, most of the hardware covered is of the more modern variety. I submit this info on this forum in hopes of acquiring, from the community, a reasonable understanding of what is possible verses what isn't. This is an experiment I hope others can benefit from, especially newbies.